Vintage Cake Dish

Found outside Lyon, this glass cake stand came from a dealer we have known for years, out of a collection his father spent decades building. It is a flat round plate in patterned clear glass, edged with a toothed rim and raised on a short pedestal foot. Glass like this was pressed into a mould to carry the deep patterns of hand-cut crystal, a 19th-century way of putting a little shine on an everyday table without the cost of the real thing. Sylvie uses it for a cake, or for a couple of artichokes when the mood takes her.